1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electronic cash register for reading article data of a sold article from an article file in which article data items of various articles are filed, and for processing the readout article data.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical electronic cash register includes a memory for storing an article file for filing article data of various articles, each article, data including items such as an article code, article name and unit price; and sales data of the articles, each sales data including items such as the number of sold articles and sales amount.
In the process of registering articles for sale, a keyboard or bar code scanner is used for inputting an article code recorded on the article in the bar code format such as JAN, EAN or UPC. The electronic cash register registers the input article code as a sold article, reads out article data of the article identified by the article code from the article file, and updates the sales data of this article filed in the article file according to the readout article data. When a new article is sold before the article code thereof is set into the article file, addition of article data is required in the registration process. When the article data of the new article is input into the electronic cash register according to the requirement, the article data is set into the article file and is used for updating the sales data.
Since the number of types of characters constructing an article name is larger than that of numerals, it is difficult to correctly input the article name in a brief period of time. In most of the general electronic cash registers, keys for inputting characters are not provided and therefore a character code of at least two digits must be input for each of the characters of the article name by use of the numeral keys. For this reason, article data except the article name thereof is input in the registration process as a temporary measure, and in general, the article names of the new articles are collectively input after the closing time.
However, if the article name is not input in the registration process, it cannot be displayed or printed for a customer's convenience. Therefore, when the electronic cash register is first installed in the store, an article file in which article data items of not only the articles actively being sold, but also the maximum permissible number of articles are filed is prepared so as to reduce the number of article data items which must be newly set in the process of registering articles for sale. In order to easily prepare such am article file, for example, it is considered to read out an article file used in another store of the same trade by use of maintenance tool and load the readout article file into a desired electronic cash register. However, even if the article file is loaded in this way, the contents of the article file must be correctly changed because indispensable items of article data or prices of articles are different. It takes a long time and much labor to make such changes.